And the World Continues to Spin…: Secularism and Demystification in Good Omens

Abstract

Pratchett’s narratives tend to portray not only multicultural but also multireligious societies. In contrast to earlier writers of fantasy, however, Pratchett writes from a decidedly atheistic point of view, an issue Daniel Scott explores in depth in this chapter. He argues that co-authors Pratchett and Gaiman use Good Omens to perform what, following Rosemary Jackson’s theory of fantasy literature (1989), is a dual subversion; in using biblical prophecy to hold a mirror up to society, they also show the faults and cracks in the mirror itself, sometimes overtly, but mostly by implication. By reducing it to this level of intertextuality, they strip it of its higher or absolute metaphysical values, therefore denying its applicability to the real world.

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